Good morning and welcome to Grace Baptist Church. I would especially like to welcome our guests here this morning. Thank you for making the trip to be with us and celebrate this wonderful morning with our church and with this one we love, Aurelia.
We’re in our 2nd week of Advent, that season wherein we take the scenic route to Christmas as we prepare for, get ready for, revel in the expectation of the birth of the Christ, the Messiah. The theme for last week was “hope” and I hope you found hope in your week. Maybe you found it, as Leonard Cohen says, where the cracks are because, well, that’s where the light finds its way in.
Our theme for this second week of advent is “peace”. If there’s one thing our world doesn’t seem to have, it’s peace, on every scale it seems, from nation spying on nation, to the use of anti-anxiety meds for our pets.
And in the midst of all the angst, and anxiety, and unrest, today and the next 6 days invite us – dare us, really – to meditate on, look for, hope for peace.
I don’t know about you, but my thinking about peace began early this Advent season, on
Thursday, with the news of the loss of Madiba, Nelson Mandela. An imperfect man to be sure, but one who strove for peace through the most radical of means – forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity.
Coincidentally, in the midst of all this we are bringing forward for ordination Aurelia. Or perhaps it’s not so much of a coincidence.
These radical means of peace sound a lot like the work we’re called to as the people of God, and the work we are calling Aurelia especially to today; they sound a lot like the work of a King who rules from a cross, whose roots are found in a humble manger.
Nelson Mandela, Jesus Christ, Aurelia Pratt. No pressure now, Aurelia.
You are a gift to us, to my family, to this church, to everyone who knows you. A gift.
Ephesians 4:11 says that Christ himself gave, gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. He gave them to the church. He has given us you.
Would you come and share your testimony with us?
(Listen to Aurelia’s Testimony of Journey here.)
Rev. Matthew Hanzelka is the Ministry and Missions Pastor at Grace Baptist Church.